How many special days a year should one kids get? Mine has so many it's almost too much to track... Let's see... Of course his birthday, that's a given... but then he has his transplant day, his "Gotcha Day", that's a big one, and let's not forget his actual adoption day and I guess now we will have an end of chemo day... That's a pretty major milestone if you ask me. Today however, we are talking about his Gotcha Day... Basically the day we got him.. It's a bit confusing for us however... we actually got him on the 12th of January, meaning that we were awarded custody as parents.. but we brought him home and introduced him to our family on the 15th.. so which day do we celebrate?, both are meaningful in their own way... Personally I choose to recognize the day we brought him home. Because we had unsupervised visitation of him in Nebraska several months before we could bring him home, it's wasn't exactly new for us to have him in our arms and sleeping in our bed, we had already been blessed with time alone with him... although once the paper is signed it's admittedly different.. The new and VERY exciting part was getting to bring him home with us... to meet his brother and sister and cousins... what an incredible day for us..
He got on the airplane and immediately started to cry hysterically... which was not so normal for him, he's always been a pretty happy kids who transitions well... but, the plane we were on was one of those puddle jumpers planes that seat like 30 people and you have to sort of bend over because even in the center isle it's not really tall enough... I was pretty frightened myself... Jesse held on to his new mom for dear life and soon fell asleep in my arms.. The best plane trip of my life.. I remember the clothes we brought him home in... he was so stinkin' cute.. I remember seeing my family at the bottom of the stairs at the Salt Lake Airport and started crying I was so happy... (note: anyone who know me well, knows that the crying part is nothing special... I cry at dog food commercials....).
So.. Today, or tomorrow actually, we acknowledge his Gotcha day... He still has no clue what that means.. I start tell him about his adoption and his eyes go sort of glassy and pretty soon he's checking out the paint bubbles on the wall and not listening to a word I'm saying. He's really not interested in hearing about his story.. Which is okay, someday he will and I'll be ready to tell him.. For days like today, he loves to call them special no matter what the reason.
What do you do for a kid who has 5 or 6 special days a year??? Nothing is what we do.. We acknowledge it and tell him how much we love him and share stories and tell him he's special. But.... no parties, no gifts, no excuses from homework or chores.. Heck, a guy as special as him would spend his whole life in the 4th grade if that were the case... ;-) We just make sure that he knows how luck we feel to have him as our kid...
How convenient would it be to have his end of chemo day and his gotcha day be on the same day...? Super convenient, and possible because his scans are tomorrow... which could make it true.. Nice..
Here's to Jesse's Gotcha Day....
No comments:
Post a Comment